Extending Cultural Realities

Cultivating improved educational outcomes, teacher performance and youth leadership through Active Learning, cultural exploration and extended reality content.

1.What is the problem that you are committed to solving?

Confucius is credited with stating “study the past, if you would divine the future”. Sadly, today in classrooms across Latin America, teachers and students are failing in both understanding their rich pasts, and in preparing for their futures, leading to disappointing progress against SDG 4, and in some cases, deprioritisation of specific targets, such as Peru’s lack of focus on 4.7, global citizenship and sustainable development in education.

Most Latin American education suffers from the same issues: outdated teaching methods; no cultural relevance for diverse students; and poor teaching quality driven by undermotivated, underpaid and undervalued teachers lacking quality, individualised training and mentoring, and access to quality materials and resources.

All-too-often students lack opportunities to learn and practice the skills required to succeed in the 21st Century. Their understandings of their own traditions and cultures are usually limited, and they often see them as “boring” or “backwards”. This drives recurrent social issues such as identity issues and an absence of a sense of belonging, both of which impact learning processes as well as resulting in racism, sexism, and homophobia. 

2.What is the solution you are proposing?

Through a personalized, scalable and culturally relevant model for teacher training, mentoring and provision of materials, we are supporting educators in cultivating 21st learning skills and cultural awareness in students.

Firstly, we train and mentor teachers in the implementation of 8 Thinking Maps© which improve skills development in learners in defining, describing, comparing/contrasting, sequencing, deconstructing, categorising, identifying cause and effect and creating analogies. Secondly, we support teachers in implementing these tools using examples from local cultures to bring the national curriculums to life. Students explore cultures according to the requirements of national curriculums, document them using a low-cost 360° camera, open-source digital maps and share and analyse them with others, using extended reality technologies, simple Android apps and physical props. This virtual community facilitates students taking a leadership role in using new, appropriate technologies to understand and document cultures, whilst also developing and sharing new critical thinking skills.

In the long-term, we plan to pilot the decentralisation of the training model through an adapted Avon Ladies business model, where experienced, qualified teachers augment their salaries through leading peer learning initiatives, overcoming the challenges they face of being underpaid and under-respected. 

3.How will your solution change the world? 

Despite globalisation, the world still suffers from a lack of understanding and empathy which has led to increased social and economic divisions along political, racial and cultural lines. In the coming decades, as new technologies change the skills required for people to flourish professionally and personally, many also face the possibility of being left behind, particularly women and girls. Improved education outcomes are part of combatting these issues, but so is improving the understanding people have of their own culture, and those of others. We believe that we can achieve these in a practical, engaging and sustainable way, in Perú, Latin America, and eventually globally

From a pedagogical perspective, our solution is innovative because it combines Active Learning with cultural investigation, both of which are currently lacking in state schools. Innovative technologies serve as effective tools – Youth use low-cost phones and 360 cameras, combined with physical objects to create and share Extended Reality experiences and edit open-source digital maps. Activities empower youth to be more engaged creators, curators and consumers of cultural content.

In the long-term we hope that moving to a decentralised peer-learning model based on the Avon Ladies business model will enable our solution to be a true game-changer for educators and youth

At a basic level, our solution relies on technologies such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp to facilitate communication, which is key to supporting and mentoring teachers and learners and to enabling youth to share their cultures. At a more advanced level, open source Digital Maps enable students to dignify communities by putting them “on the map” for the first time in their histories. Use of Extended Reality technologies with low tech, physical objects enable youth to create truly immersive experiences capable of creating empathy and communicating complex messages as part of their learning experience.

We are currently at an early stage of piloting, with the physical devices and professional support required for a Minimum Viable Pilot in 2 schools from different socio-geographic areas in the Cusco region. Over the next year we have three goals:

Firstly, test, learn and iterate the pilot thoroughly, whilst investing in more professional support for teachers. Secondly, confirm state schools to scale with during the new school year. Thirdly, conclude and formalise positive conversations we’re having with partners from public, private and civil sectors to improve connectivity capabilities, increase the depth of cultural exploration and formalise government involvement.

Our vision over the next three to five years is to implement across Latin America with the backing of national education ministries, regional governments, and other allies focused on connectivity and cultural heritage. We also want our combination of Active Learning and focus on cultures to move from being aligned to national curriculums, to being formalised within them. Within three years, we also want to be testing and iterating a new peer-educator based business model where experienced, qualified teachers train others, thus receiving economic gain for achieving excellence.

We aim to prove our value to students, parents, teachers and authorities through improved educational results in pilot schools. This will enable us scale to other state schools and formalise our relationship with the Ministry of Education. The solution will be rolled out through in-person teacher training and provision of the necessary technologies, followed by mentoring and community support. Youth will have access to these tools when relevant both during and out of school hours.

Having launched in April 2018, we currently serve 80 secondary school students and seven teachers in our first pilot school, a low-cost private school in Cusco. All have access to in-person mentoring, Thinking Maps©, and required connectivity, hardware and software. We are also working with four teachers and 140 youth in our second pilot school, a state school located six hours from Cusco. Peer learning and cultural sharing between the initial two schools have commenced, and we are in the process of starting to work with the third pilot school, a state school in the high Andean grasslands.

Within 12 months we expect to be serving over 80 teachers and 1000 students across our three pilot schools with in-person training, mentoring, and support through the virtual community. Around 75% will be from our pilot state schools and in a region that performs poorly in national school results. We expect to see improvements in student performance, particularly in communications within the first year due to the new teaching methods and tools. We also expect to see increased self-awareness and soft-skills, such as teamwork due to the focus on cultural heritage, as well as increased teacher satisfaction.

Our team counts on over 30 years of profesional experience working in education and cultural communication across the Andes. Additionally, we count on technical expertise from experience working in the world’s largest Digital Agency, including using open source digital maps, extended reality tools and virtual communities in education projects. 

Perhaps most importantly, we work hand-in-hand with a low-cost private school in Cusco, enabling us to work with teachers on a daily basis. Combined, we believe we’re well positioned to attract the human and financial resources required to make the project a success.

Currently, we are financed by GAL School, and a device grant from HOTOSM and NetHope. Post-pilot our revenue model will be based on a production model, where we will sell our services to the ministry of education, local and regional governments, private sector foundations and NGOs. Given the proven return on investment in education at primary and secondary school level, previous results from Active Learning, and the importance of traditional cultures in the region we are confident in our short-medium term value proposition.

Within 3 years we want to expand this model to include a licensing model, where proven, quality teachers with experience working with our solution can receive training to build capacity with, mentor and provide approved resources to other teachers and pay a small percentage of the fees they charge to GAL Center. Whilst this alone would likely not provide financial sustainability and growth, we believe that it will play an important role, as well as improving the credibility of the solution amongst teachers.   

We are applying to Solve for two reasons: Firstly, in the short-term we believe the prize money can strengthen our likely success during and immediately after our current pilot and will improve our ability to scale. Secondly, we believe that the socialisation of our concept as part of Solve will lead to valuable feedback on ways to improve and also the creation of mutually beneficial partnerships. Specifically, we're looking for groups to scale with us across the region and tackle some challenges we cannot combat alone, such as affordable connectivity in the most rural areas.

In the next 12 months the success of our pilot is dependent on the amount of professional support we can provide to teachers and also our ability to quantify our impact. In the medium-long term, to reach the poorest and most marginalised we will need to expand to areas without affordable connectivity. We believe that the funding from Solve can help us in the short-term whilst advice from peers and chances to create meaningful partnerships that go beyond simple CSR programs will help us to scale and overcome specific issues, such as those related to connectivity.